Froman, Malmström go toe to toe on TTIP procurement

HANOVER, Germany — U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström traded barbs today over public procurement policies in relation to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

The U.S., with its “buy American” laws, is often criticized for discriminating against foreign firms when opening public contracts. But speaking at the Hanover Fair, Froman defended the U.S., saying “we have done the analysis … [and] our procurement market is at least as open as it is in Europe.”

“We have bound, on our federal and state level, about 25 percent of our total procurement, and that equates to about $320 billion a year,” he said. “These procurements are completely and totally open to international participation.” European companies do “quite well” in this market, he said.

The U.S. could still “do more,” but “we have to start from a good set of facts,” Froman said, suggesting the EU was painting a distorted picture of the U.S.’s public procurement practices.

But Malmström dug in, arguing that Europe is more open and transparent than the U.S. because “we have one system [to handle procurement] for 28 countries, where everything is published in one database in English, and there is no ‘buy Europe,’ no quotas for small- and medium-sized companies.”

A commission source, speaking to POLITICO ahead of the Messe, was even more direct. “We have a big problem with the American statistics, because they will tell you everything is basically open in the U.S., but when you want to check these numbers you find there is actually no statistics available at all,” the source said. “There are 50 states, none of them has a harmonized reporting [to cover what there is] in terms of public expenditure … so it’s all about estimates … it’s very, very unreliable.”

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